There are known mechanisms used for coordinating and synchronizing mutual connections among electronic system apparatus for sharing data and resources. Communications protocols are sets of standard data formats and language constructs for device identification and data representation among electronic systems. Communications protocols may be generally characterized as either low-level protocols or high-level protocols. Low-level protocols such as RS-232, I2C, SMBus, and PMBus, for example, provide relatively streamlined means for communicating a relatively limited quantity of information such as physical interface characteristics, signal characteristics, circuit parameters, state information, and error reporting. Low-level protocols are typically used in simple low-cost electronics that require basic communications such as “smart” batteries, power supplies and handheld instruments. Low-level protocols are optimized towards low-cost systems that have simple hardware logic and/or a small micro-controller. Due to their simplicity and limitations, such protocols require additional processing and/or hardware resources in order to support different types of system applications, tending to increase the complexity of the host system. This limits the efficiency of software resources on the host and their potential for reuse.
High-level protocols have been developed to support complex applications such as personal computers, telecommunications and network infrastructure. High-level protocols, for example TCP/IP (Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol), have many different facilities built into the protocol such as sequencing, addressing and versioning that can support complex applications. Such protocols require sophisticated processing resources, such as 32-bit micro-processors, external memory subsystems, and media framers, to accommodate the operation of the protocol. Along with a great deal of flexibility and scalability, high-level protocols also bring a demand for significant hardware resources in order to support the protocol. This is due not only to the large size of a high-level protocol, but also due to the necessary algorithms and processing required to implement each of several included protocol layers. In a typical layered high-level protocol, each layer has an assigned function, receiving services from the layer below, and performing services for the layer above. For example, a lower layer may perform data delivery, while another layer immediately above performs connection management. Each individual layer is relatively simple, since it performs only one specific function. The overall high-level protocol architecture however, may include many layers and may be very complex.
It is also known in the arts to use protocol tunneling schemes in which one protocol, usually a low-level protocol, is carried as data, or encapsulated, within another protocol, usually of a higher level. Accordingly, such a protocol tunneling system requires that the high-level system be endowed with the capability of using both the high-level “tunnel” protocol, and the low-level “tunneled” protocol. Thus, protocol tunneling may be used to combine otherwise incompatible system components, but as currently practiced in the art, nevertheless requires the inclusion of all relevant protocols within the host system.
The present invention is directed to overcoming, or at least reducing, problems present in the prior art, and contributes one or more heretofore unforeseen advantages to the art, such as providing improved integration of multi-component systems using different protocols, simplified interoperability, and reduced system development costs while providing backward-compatibility to prior art systems.